Mad Max: Fury Road has generated heated coverage since its release last month. But focussing on the film's terse script may be missing the point: it should be read as a poem, and a provocative one at that.

An era has ended. The last of the “Watergate Babies” has left the Congress. The nickname was applied to the class of House Democratic freshmen elected in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal. There…